Love, Medicine, And Miracles
Sermon
A God For This World
Gospel Sermons For Advent/Christmas/Epiphany
It was the cover story in Psychology Today. In another time it might surprise us, but in this age of change and discovery and searching for new, adequate meanings for life and health, it may not seem as unusual. The bold cover headlines state, "Spiritual Healing Hits The Suburbs."
Excerpted from a newly released book, Ritual Healing In Suburban America by Meredith McGuire and assistants, the article focuses on unconventional ways of understanding our illnesses and unconventional ways of treating them. If spiritual diagnosis and spiritual healing were earlier assigned by sociologists to the lower classes and primitive peoples, it is now the middle and upper middle classes who have been searching out a deeper meaning to illness and finding cures outside the traditional biological understanding of medicine.
The author found that these alternative understandings and practices were not something to which people resorted when all else failed. Instead, "most adherents we found were initially attracted by that larger belief system which provides, among other things, an alternative explanation of the origins of illness and a specific theory of health, deviance and healing power" (Psychology Today, Jan.-Feb. 1989, p. 58).
In contrast to popular notions about such groups, little money changes hands. Instead, most spiritual healing groups tend to be religiously or psychologically based, where love, mutual support, and caring encouragement are shared. Most all groups call upon a higher power for healing, whether that power is called God, Divine Mind, cosmic energy, or inner resources within the person.
Typical medical personnel, says the author, tend to ignore the more personal aspects of illness to treat the patient as a "case." But the new groups "spiritualize rather than medicalize" issues relating to health. "They challenge the medical model of healing by redefining the sources of illness and individual responsibility for (them)" (ibid., p. 59).
The authors would be in agreement with a spate of books in recent years speaking of alternative ways of diagnosing illness and effecting treatment and cure. One of the most popular of such books is Dr. Bernard Siegel's Love, Medicine and Miracles, which was on The New York Times best-seller list for many weeks. A practicing surgeon and professor at Yale University, Dr. Siegel speaks movingly of his own conversion to a new way of seeing and of practicing medicine. In short, through faith, hope, and unconditional love, he has witnessed miracle after miracle. Accepting the findings that the majority of our illnesses are psychosomatic, he therefore proposes treatment which is psychosomatic in nature -- treating both body and soul.
At first glance it would seem those of us in the religious community would be saying, "Of course, we've believed that all along. Look how much time and energy Jesus devoted to healing." But on second glance, it must be said that those of us in the religious community have become quite skeptical about spiritual healing. We have rightly suspected some of the faith healers to be perpetrating a hoax on naive, desperate, and gullible people.
We Protestants, smitten with a heavy dose of rationalism, have been suspicious of claimed miraculous healings at Roman Catholic religious shrines like Lourdes. Further, we Protestants of the Reformed tradition have often said miracles ceased with Jesus and the apostles. Consequently, we have even been negligent in praying for the sick, believing only in so-called "rational" cures.
But Dr. Siegel and others are calling us to shed our old ideas and narrowness of thought, to look at the larger realities which are breaking in upon us. The age of miracles is not over, especially for those with eyes to see. There are marvelous examples of miraculous healing taking place every day, says Dr. Siegel.
In that context, let us look again at the well-known story of Jesus' healing of the leper. Who were the actors in this story and what were the factors needed for healing? They may be remarkably similar to those suggested by Dr. Siegel.
I
Consider first the leper, the man who was healed.
In the time of Jesus, leprosy was a term applied to a variety of diseases which manifested themselves on the skin. Some of those diseases may well have had psychosomatic sources; that is sources which arise out of the psyche, or soul or mind, which in turn affect the soma, the body. Thus the leper might have had a psychosomatic or mind-body illness.
In his unique medical practice, Dr. Siegel has come to believe that a great many of our diseases are psychosomatic in nature. Dr. Bernard Fox of Boston suggests, for example, that depressed men are twice as likely to get cancer as non-depressed men. People full of hate and resentment are more susceptible to illness. Persons with low self-esteem are likelier to be ill than those with high self-esteem. Dr. Granger Westberg of the Holistic Health Care Centers believes fifty to 75 percent of illnesses originate in problems of the spirit rather than in brokenness of the body. And most any physician today would say that many of his or her patients have psychosomatic symptoms and illnesses.
We are not told how the leper in our story became ill. It could be the result of psychosomatic conditions. Some people have become ill as a result of a deep guilt complex. Others have become ill because of obsessive fear and insecurity.
Whether "leprosy" or illness, many of us have come to associate sickness with rewards, says Dr. Siegel. "We get to stay in bed and relax. People send us cards and flowers. Friends write and tell us they love us. Parents and spouses bring us chicken soup and read to us" (Siegel, op. cit., p. 110). Sickness gives us the "permission" to do things we otherwise would be prohibited from doing. We can say no to unwelcome burdens and duties and push them off on to others.
When the aged mother of a surgeon friend of mine died, I called on the family to spend time with them and to plan for the funeral. The mother had been in and out of hospitals and in and out of sickbeds many times. When we called on her before her death, she would recite, with some apparent pleasure, the long list of ailments and maladies she had endured.
Remembering that trait about his mother, my surgeon friend observed with lighthearted candor, "Yes, my mother has enjoyed ill health for many years!" He meant, of course, that through her illnesses, feigned or real, she could manipulate him and all the family to do her bidding. If the truth be known, she preferred not to be well. She wanted others to take the responsibility for her.
Another woman of my acquaintance was, in her younger years, a serious hypochondriac. As it turned out, her many illnesses, real or imagined, were a way of gaining the attention and services of her mother, who tended to ignore her and who tended to deny any kind of illness. It was a vicious cycle.
It may be the leper in our story was ill due to fear or guilt or hypochondria. He may have, as the saying goes, enjoyed ill health for years, with people pitying him and waiting on him hand and foot.
Whatever the past may have been, he is changing now. He is coming to see Jesus, the famous spiritual healer. He is tired of the past with all its hindrances, restrictions, and limitations. He now wants to be made whole. He wants to be well. He says to Jesus, "If you will, you can make me clean."
The leper, by coming to Jesus, has taken charge of his life, which is essential to healing, says Dr. Siegel. That puts him in the top fifteen to twenty percent, says the Yale surgeon. At the other end of the scale, about fifteen to twenty percent of his patients consciously or unconsciously want to die, says Siegel. The other sixty to seventy percent are in the middle, more or less playing the role the doctor assigns to them. But now, whatever his past, the leper is ready to be healed. He is ready to take responsibility for his illness and his cure. And he is ready for a miracle.
II
If the paralytic patient was a principal actor in this miracle story, so were the friends who believed him, accepted him, included him, and spread the good news so that "Jesus could no longer openly enter a town, but was out in the country; and the people came to him from every quarter" (Mark 1:45).
Whatever our illness, we need friends who support us, help us, and then who accept us and include us as healed persons, as well and as whole. We need people who want us to be well as much as we want to be well. We need a support group and agents of healing who believe we can be made whole.
Many of the agents for healing are found in hospitals. A father and his son, farmers from the boondocks, were making their first visit to the big city hospital. Standing in the hospital lobby, they saw an elevator for the first time. They watched an old cleaning lady, laden with bucket and mop, her body stooped and worn, revealing the ravages of labor and poverty, enter the elevator.
They watched the silver doors close and the numbers above the elevator light up, stop, then start down again. The silver doors opened and out stepped the most beautiful woman they had ever seen. The father turned to his son and said, "Quick, son, go get your mother!" Miraculous elevators or not, most of us need a support group. Dr. Siegel formed a support group known as ECP, Exceptional Cancer Patients. Here, cancer patients, as well as family and friends, listened to, encouraged, shared with, prayed for, and sustained one another to aid in the healing process.
As many of us know, illness can be relational, that is, it has to do with our relationships. A support group often can be a therapy group to help us be cleansed of hostility, resentment, anger, guilt, grudges, bitterness, and hopelessness. Very often, once the relationship has been made psychologically whole, the patient becomes physically whole.
III
But, of course, it was Jesus who was the main actor in this healing miracle. Jesus was the special agent of the divine power present in all healing.
The study of spiritual healing in the suburbs reported by Psychology Today notes that most all healing involves some contact with power outside oneself. To be sure, most all groups emphasize the power of the mind to effect bodily cure and the immense resources of spiritual power within each of us to aid in healing. Nevertheless, in addition to these and in addition to traditional medicine, there is emphasis upon God or universal mind or cosmic power. By participating in this divine source outside the self, healing is effected.
In our story, Jesus is the focus for eliciting the divine power and being put in touch with it. By his reputation and his powerful sense of presence, he was able to elicit faith from the leper as well as from his friends. Faith is essential for healing, says Dr. Siegel, faith in oneself, faith in one's doctor, faith in one's treatment, and faith in God or a cosmic, spiritual force. Jesus, like the good physician he was, had the power to elicit faith.
But even more, Jesus had the power to elicit love -- the leper's love of God and love of himself. By healing the leper, Jesus in effect said that his sins were forgiven. Thus the leper could be released to love himself, to shed all the negative self-images which had been thrust upon him by family and friends, and to develop a healthy self-esteem.
Says Dr. Siegel, "The fundamental problem most patients face is an inability to love themselves, having been unloved by others during some crucial part of their lives" (op. cit., p. 4). Thus, when Jesus pronounces forgiveness he says, "You are not the unloved, unwanted child any more. You are not the family scapegoat or the abused wife. The flaw within you which made you feel unlovable is now eradicated."
When Jesus says, "I forgive you," it is another way of saying, "I love you." When we forgive, it is our way of saying, "I love you." Your life is of infinite worth and is really no more flawed than anyone else's. Take charge of your life and walk into a healthy, whole life with your head up high, knowing you can love yourself because you are loved by the Son of God. And such affirmation, such love, says Yale's Dr. Siegel, is the most powerful stimulant of the body's immune system to ward off and defeat disease.
Following in the train of great spiritual healers like Jesus, Dr. Siegel emphasizes the importance of unconditional love in healing. Spirituality as exhibited in faith, forgiveness, peace, and love is always present in those who achieve unexpected healing from serious illness, says Dr. Siegel. Consequently, it is important for the patient to be full of hope and determination, to visualize himself or herself with new self-images where forgiveness has erased the past and has made possible the beginning of a new self and new relationships.
Follow good habits of nutrition, says the doctor. Exercise regularly, laugh a lot, refrain from smoking, drink only moderately, think positively rather than negatively, forgive, and you will be forgiven. Choose to be healthy and have the courage to heed the words of Jesus: "Your sins are forgiven. Be made clean."
And then it will be said as in Palestine long ago, "We have seen strange things here today."
Prayer
Eternal God, who loves the world with a steadfast love, and yet who keeps your distance from the world to give it freedom for development and growth, we praise you for the risks you have taken in bringing forth the world out of your own Being, to take a chance on love and freedom. Like a parent bringing forth children into the world, uncertain what the future holds, so you have brought us into being, unwilling to predetermine our every thought and move and action. We thank you for the gift of freedom which makes faith and hope and love more real.
In your presence, as students before the master teacher, it is for us to confess our frequent misuse of freedom. Some of us have been ignorant or smug, ignoring wise counsel or the wisdom of the ages. Some of us, out of fear and defensiveness, have rationalized our bad habits and justified our oppressive thinking. Some of us, refusing to mature spiritually and emotionally, remain infantile and dependent in our actions. Others of us, conceited and arrogant from the spoils of recent success, have changed liberty to license, forgetting our balanced relationship with you and one another. Forgive our frequent misuse of freedom, we pray.
If it is true we bring some of our illness and suffering upon ourselves because of misused freedom, it is also true disease and suffering come to us, from where we do not know. Look then with mercy and pity on all the weak and diseased, the sick and suffering peoples of the world. Come into each hospital and nursing home, each emergency room and refugee camp, each leper colony and psychiatric ward, each children's and veteran's hospital and sickroom at home, each cancer ward and surgical suite, and let your compassionate healing presence be made known with new force and power.
Almighty God, Divine Mind of the universe, let the power and influence of your positive thinking flow through us all with new force. If as lethargic or dull or conceited students we have been unwilling to think your new thoughts, help us to be open to you, to let your power and thinking flow through us to make us whole and well. If we have been overburdened with guilt or spiritually congested with resentment and hostility, cleanse our souls, that we might be unburdened and refreshed.
Oh how earnestly we pray for the sick and suffering. We pray for doctors and nurses, for technicians and administrators, for researchers and drug companies, for counselors, ministers, and psychiatrists, that new waves of your healing power might flow through them. Let this be an age of new wholeness and health, so that like you, we might be whole, and therefore holy. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.
Excerpted from a newly released book, Ritual Healing In Suburban America by Meredith McGuire and assistants, the article focuses on unconventional ways of understanding our illnesses and unconventional ways of treating them. If spiritual diagnosis and spiritual healing were earlier assigned by sociologists to the lower classes and primitive peoples, it is now the middle and upper middle classes who have been searching out a deeper meaning to illness and finding cures outside the traditional biological understanding of medicine.
The author found that these alternative understandings and practices were not something to which people resorted when all else failed. Instead, "most adherents we found were initially attracted by that larger belief system which provides, among other things, an alternative explanation of the origins of illness and a specific theory of health, deviance and healing power" (Psychology Today, Jan.-Feb. 1989, p. 58).
In contrast to popular notions about such groups, little money changes hands. Instead, most spiritual healing groups tend to be religiously or psychologically based, where love, mutual support, and caring encouragement are shared. Most all groups call upon a higher power for healing, whether that power is called God, Divine Mind, cosmic energy, or inner resources within the person.
Typical medical personnel, says the author, tend to ignore the more personal aspects of illness to treat the patient as a "case." But the new groups "spiritualize rather than medicalize" issues relating to health. "They challenge the medical model of healing by redefining the sources of illness and individual responsibility for (them)" (ibid., p. 59).
The authors would be in agreement with a spate of books in recent years speaking of alternative ways of diagnosing illness and effecting treatment and cure. One of the most popular of such books is Dr. Bernard Siegel's Love, Medicine and Miracles, which was on The New York Times best-seller list for many weeks. A practicing surgeon and professor at Yale University, Dr. Siegel speaks movingly of his own conversion to a new way of seeing and of practicing medicine. In short, through faith, hope, and unconditional love, he has witnessed miracle after miracle. Accepting the findings that the majority of our illnesses are psychosomatic, he therefore proposes treatment which is psychosomatic in nature -- treating both body and soul.
At first glance it would seem those of us in the religious community would be saying, "Of course, we've believed that all along. Look how much time and energy Jesus devoted to healing." But on second glance, it must be said that those of us in the religious community have become quite skeptical about spiritual healing. We have rightly suspected some of the faith healers to be perpetrating a hoax on naive, desperate, and gullible people.
We Protestants, smitten with a heavy dose of rationalism, have been suspicious of claimed miraculous healings at Roman Catholic religious shrines like Lourdes. Further, we Protestants of the Reformed tradition have often said miracles ceased with Jesus and the apostles. Consequently, we have even been negligent in praying for the sick, believing only in so-called "rational" cures.
But Dr. Siegel and others are calling us to shed our old ideas and narrowness of thought, to look at the larger realities which are breaking in upon us. The age of miracles is not over, especially for those with eyes to see. There are marvelous examples of miraculous healing taking place every day, says Dr. Siegel.
In that context, let us look again at the well-known story of Jesus' healing of the leper. Who were the actors in this story and what were the factors needed for healing? They may be remarkably similar to those suggested by Dr. Siegel.
I
Consider first the leper, the man who was healed.
In the time of Jesus, leprosy was a term applied to a variety of diseases which manifested themselves on the skin. Some of those diseases may well have had psychosomatic sources; that is sources which arise out of the psyche, or soul or mind, which in turn affect the soma, the body. Thus the leper might have had a psychosomatic or mind-body illness.
In his unique medical practice, Dr. Siegel has come to believe that a great many of our diseases are psychosomatic in nature. Dr. Bernard Fox of Boston suggests, for example, that depressed men are twice as likely to get cancer as non-depressed men. People full of hate and resentment are more susceptible to illness. Persons with low self-esteem are likelier to be ill than those with high self-esteem. Dr. Granger Westberg of the Holistic Health Care Centers believes fifty to 75 percent of illnesses originate in problems of the spirit rather than in brokenness of the body. And most any physician today would say that many of his or her patients have psychosomatic symptoms and illnesses.
We are not told how the leper in our story became ill. It could be the result of psychosomatic conditions. Some people have become ill as a result of a deep guilt complex. Others have become ill because of obsessive fear and insecurity.
Whether "leprosy" or illness, many of us have come to associate sickness with rewards, says Dr. Siegel. "We get to stay in bed and relax. People send us cards and flowers. Friends write and tell us they love us. Parents and spouses bring us chicken soup and read to us" (Siegel, op. cit., p. 110). Sickness gives us the "permission" to do things we otherwise would be prohibited from doing. We can say no to unwelcome burdens and duties and push them off on to others.
When the aged mother of a surgeon friend of mine died, I called on the family to spend time with them and to plan for the funeral. The mother had been in and out of hospitals and in and out of sickbeds many times. When we called on her before her death, she would recite, with some apparent pleasure, the long list of ailments and maladies she had endured.
Remembering that trait about his mother, my surgeon friend observed with lighthearted candor, "Yes, my mother has enjoyed ill health for many years!" He meant, of course, that through her illnesses, feigned or real, she could manipulate him and all the family to do her bidding. If the truth be known, she preferred not to be well. She wanted others to take the responsibility for her.
Another woman of my acquaintance was, in her younger years, a serious hypochondriac. As it turned out, her many illnesses, real or imagined, were a way of gaining the attention and services of her mother, who tended to ignore her and who tended to deny any kind of illness. It was a vicious cycle.
It may be the leper in our story was ill due to fear or guilt or hypochondria. He may have, as the saying goes, enjoyed ill health for years, with people pitying him and waiting on him hand and foot.
Whatever the past may have been, he is changing now. He is coming to see Jesus, the famous spiritual healer. He is tired of the past with all its hindrances, restrictions, and limitations. He now wants to be made whole. He wants to be well. He says to Jesus, "If you will, you can make me clean."
The leper, by coming to Jesus, has taken charge of his life, which is essential to healing, says Dr. Siegel. That puts him in the top fifteen to twenty percent, says the Yale surgeon. At the other end of the scale, about fifteen to twenty percent of his patients consciously or unconsciously want to die, says Siegel. The other sixty to seventy percent are in the middle, more or less playing the role the doctor assigns to them. But now, whatever his past, the leper is ready to be healed. He is ready to take responsibility for his illness and his cure. And he is ready for a miracle.
II
If the paralytic patient was a principal actor in this miracle story, so were the friends who believed him, accepted him, included him, and spread the good news so that "Jesus could no longer openly enter a town, but was out in the country; and the people came to him from every quarter" (Mark 1:45).
Whatever our illness, we need friends who support us, help us, and then who accept us and include us as healed persons, as well and as whole. We need people who want us to be well as much as we want to be well. We need a support group and agents of healing who believe we can be made whole.
Many of the agents for healing are found in hospitals. A father and his son, farmers from the boondocks, were making their first visit to the big city hospital. Standing in the hospital lobby, they saw an elevator for the first time. They watched an old cleaning lady, laden with bucket and mop, her body stooped and worn, revealing the ravages of labor and poverty, enter the elevator.
They watched the silver doors close and the numbers above the elevator light up, stop, then start down again. The silver doors opened and out stepped the most beautiful woman they had ever seen. The father turned to his son and said, "Quick, son, go get your mother!" Miraculous elevators or not, most of us need a support group. Dr. Siegel formed a support group known as ECP, Exceptional Cancer Patients. Here, cancer patients, as well as family and friends, listened to, encouraged, shared with, prayed for, and sustained one another to aid in the healing process.
As many of us know, illness can be relational, that is, it has to do with our relationships. A support group often can be a therapy group to help us be cleansed of hostility, resentment, anger, guilt, grudges, bitterness, and hopelessness. Very often, once the relationship has been made psychologically whole, the patient becomes physically whole.
III
But, of course, it was Jesus who was the main actor in this healing miracle. Jesus was the special agent of the divine power present in all healing.
The study of spiritual healing in the suburbs reported by Psychology Today notes that most all healing involves some contact with power outside oneself. To be sure, most all groups emphasize the power of the mind to effect bodily cure and the immense resources of spiritual power within each of us to aid in healing. Nevertheless, in addition to these and in addition to traditional medicine, there is emphasis upon God or universal mind or cosmic power. By participating in this divine source outside the self, healing is effected.
In our story, Jesus is the focus for eliciting the divine power and being put in touch with it. By his reputation and his powerful sense of presence, he was able to elicit faith from the leper as well as from his friends. Faith is essential for healing, says Dr. Siegel, faith in oneself, faith in one's doctor, faith in one's treatment, and faith in God or a cosmic, spiritual force. Jesus, like the good physician he was, had the power to elicit faith.
But even more, Jesus had the power to elicit love -- the leper's love of God and love of himself. By healing the leper, Jesus in effect said that his sins were forgiven. Thus the leper could be released to love himself, to shed all the negative self-images which had been thrust upon him by family and friends, and to develop a healthy self-esteem.
Says Dr. Siegel, "The fundamental problem most patients face is an inability to love themselves, having been unloved by others during some crucial part of their lives" (op. cit., p. 4). Thus, when Jesus pronounces forgiveness he says, "You are not the unloved, unwanted child any more. You are not the family scapegoat or the abused wife. The flaw within you which made you feel unlovable is now eradicated."
When Jesus says, "I forgive you," it is another way of saying, "I love you." When we forgive, it is our way of saying, "I love you." Your life is of infinite worth and is really no more flawed than anyone else's. Take charge of your life and walk into a healthy, whole life with your head up high, knowing you can love yourself because you are loved by the Son of God. And such affirmation, such love, says Yale's Dr. Siegel, is the most powerful stimulant of the body's immune system to ward off and defeat disease.
Following in the train of great spiritual healers like Jesus, Dr. Siegel emphasizes the importance of unconditional love in healing. Spirituality as exhibited in faith, forgiveness, peace, and love is always present in those who achieve unexpected healing from serious illness, says Dr. Siegel. Consequently, it is important for the patient to be full of hope and determination, to visualize himself or herself with new self-images where forgiveness has erased the past and has made possible the beginning of a new self and new relationships.
Follow good habits of nutrition, says the doctor. Exercise regularly, laugh a lot, refrain from smoking, drink only moderately, think positively rather than negatively, forgive, and you will be forgiven. Choose to be healthy and have the courage to heed the words of Jesus: "Your sins are forgiven. Be made clean."
And then it will be said as in Palestine long ago, "We have seen strange things here today."
Prayer
Eternal God, who loves the world with a steadfast love, and yet who keeps your distance from the world to give it freedom for development and growth, we praise you for the risks you have taken in bringing forth the world out of your own Being, to take a chance on love and freedom. Like a parent bringing forth children into the world, uncertain what the future holds, so you have brought us into being, unwilling to predetermine our every thought and move and action. We thank you for the gift of freedom which makes faith and hope and love more real.
In your presence, as students before the master teacher, it is for us to confess our frequent misuse of freedom. Some of us have been ignorant or smug, ignoring wise counsel or the wisdom of the ages. Some of us, out of fear and defensiveness, have rationalized our bad habits and justified our oppressive thinking. Some of us, refusing to mature spiritually and emotionally, remain infantile and dependent in our actions. Others of us, conceited and arrogant from the spoils of recent success, have changed liberty to license, forgetting our balanced relationship with you and one another. Forgive our frequent misuse of freedom, we pray.
If it is true we bring some of our illness and suffering upon ourselves because of misused freedom, it is also true disease and suffering come to us, from where we do not know. Look then with mercy and pity on all the weak and diseased, the sick and suffering peoples of the world. Come into each hospital and nursing home, each emergency room and refugee camp, each leper colony and psychiatric ward, each children's and veteran's hospital and sickroom at home, each cancer ward and surgical suite, and let your compassionate healing presence be made known with new force and power.
Almighty God, Divine Mind of the universe, let the power and influence of your positive thinking flow through us all with new force. If as lethargic or dull or conceited students we have been unwilling to think your new thoughts, help us to be open to you, to let your power and thinking flow through us to make us whole and well. If we have been overburdened with guilt or spiritually congested with resentment and hostility, cleanse our souls, that we might be unburdened and refreshed.
Oh how earnestly we pray for the sick and suffering. We pray for doctors and nurses, for technicians and administrators, for researchers and drug companies, for counselors, ministers, and psychiatrists, that new waves of your healing power might flow through them. Let this be an age of new wholeness and health, so that like you, we might be whole, and therefore holy. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.
